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Barnes & Noble has sent out invitations to a May 24 event in New York City to announce a new e-reader device, most likely a new Nook.

Barnes & Noble has not indicated what the event will cover, with PR firm Fleishman refusing to take a page from Apple's playbook and tease audiences with what the announcement could include.

However, in a May 4 10K filing, Barnes & Noble disclosed that the May 24 announcement would indeed be an e-reader. "In a meeting with investor analysts on May 4, 2011, Barnes & Noble, Inc. (the "Company") indicated it expects to make an announcement on May 24, 2011 regarding the launch of a new eReader device," the company said, without elaborating.

Barnes & Noble now represents more than 25 percent of all of the U.S. market for e-books, more than the company's share of physical books, and it sells twice the number of e-books as physical books, at least online. The company exceeded its sales plans for e-book sales during the company's most recent quarter.It is the fourth straight quarter of topline growth exceeding 50 percent since selling the Nook in 2009.

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Barnes & Noble is readying an updated e-reader, the company revealed in a recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

"In a meeting with investor analysts on May 4, 2011, Barnes & Noble ... indicated it expects to make an announcement on May 24, 2011 regarding the launch of a new eReader device," the notice said.

The company provided no other details about what the updated e-reader might entail. The last major Nook upgrade was the Nook Color (pictured above,) which started shipping in November. The Android-based device includes a 7-inch touch screen and access to more than 2 million titles, as well as an extra-wide viewing angle intended for sharing. The screen boasts 1,024-by-600 resolution and 169 pixels per inch. It comes with 8GB of storage, expandable up to 32GB with a microSD card.

In late April, Barnes & Noble pushed out a major software update to the Nook Color, which included its own app store, an email client, the ability to play Flash video, and enhanced books. It also added support for Android 2.2 "Froyo" and Adobe Flash video.

We're been keeping our eye on gadgets that are worthy of being given to your mom for Mother's Day, and we've got another one for you. eBay has a deal where you get 50% off the Nook Wi-Fi + 3G e-reader. Original price on these is $199, and you get it direct from Barnes & Noble for $99 - and that includes shipping! There's a limit of one per customer. If you're interested, head on over:

Famous authors won't lose the ability to autograph their books in the digital age if Barnes & Noble has anything to say about it. With a firmware upgrade, the Nook Color will reportedly allow authors to sign their books with a stylus. The first "e-book signing" is scheduled for next week.

Authors will need to put their Sharpies down, and instead use a stylus to sign a book directly on the Nook Color's touchscreen, and the e-reader will store the signature on that digital copy of the book. Presumably, the signature would be visible to anyone who reads it, even friends who borrow the book on the Nook platform, essentially converting bragging rights to digital form.

Yesterday the Nook Color received a major software upgrade—adding apps, an email client, and Adobe Flash compatibility—but the new autograph feature appears to be separate from that. A company called Autography has patented software for writing autographs on e-books, but it's not known whether the Nook feature uses that technique or something different.

AT&T announced Monday that it will start selling the Amazon Kindle 3G in its retail stores nationwide starting March 6.

AT&T will include the Kindle in its connected devices section. The Kindle 3G will connect to the Web over Wi-Fi and AT&T's 3G network, allowing users to wirelessly download books, magazines, newspapers, and blogs on the 6-inch device. It sells for $189 and can hold up to 3,500 books.

Here's today’s Deal of the Day list, where we bring the the top discounts on gadgets and consumer electronics for the day. The highlight for today is a huge clearance sale at Walmart (they've got thousands of items marked down) alongside a Best Buy video game sale:

According to an inside source, the Nook 3G is being discontinued by Barnes & Noble. The company cites lack of bulk demand for the device, and is now filling orders until the stock is depleted. The Nook is one of the strongest Kindle alternatives out there, but we think it's fairly obvious that there isn't really that much of a need to have your ebook reader perpetually connected to the Internet through 3G. Anyhow, if you've been thinking about getting a Nook with 3G built-in, now's the time.

Amazon released some facts about their Christmas Holidays, and among them we find out that the Kindle 3 is their best selling product ever, eclipsing Harry Potter which held the spot with the Deathly Hallows. Other facts include Christmas day itself having seen more people download more Kindle Buy Once and Read Everywhere apps ever, and the most popular book on Kindle was The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Some other Holidays best sellers were The Confession: A Novel by John Grisham, Decision Points by George Bush and Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. On the site's peak day, November 29, 13.7 million items were ordered worldwide. Another interesting tidbit is the fact that Amazon is seeing many people who buy Kindles also have another tablet such as the iPad. It seems the e-ink display of the Kindle, and it's low price point, may be enough incentive for readers, even if they already own another device.

iBooks 1.2 has just been released by Apple, and with it comes a bunch of new features. You get support for full illustrations, AirPrint functionality for printing PDFs and notes in books, and more text fits on the page in iOS 4.2 and higher with auto-hyphenation. iBooks 1.2 also brings a new feature called Collections. These allow you to group your books similarly to how you can group apps into folders.